StarDestroyer.Net BBS

My magic powers must be working today - I walked into Goodwill on a whim thinking "Wouldn't it be awesome if a decent camera like an Olympus XA ended up in the bulk camera bin because it doesn't look like anything special?" I walked out of Goodwill with an XA2 in my hand that only cost me a dollar. Hell yes.

Two more from my larking around down at the docks:





Would anyone be interested in a monthly photo challenge? I have a couple of ideas on how one might be run without much administrative effort, if any, and I'd be game to participate as well.

Simplicius wrote: Would anyone be interested in a monthly photo challenge? I have a couple of ideas on how one might be run without much administrative effort, if any, and I'd be game to participate as well.

Fuck yeah. Weekly even?

I'm interested.

DEATH wrote:Fuck yeah. Weekly even?

I think monthly would be better on the whole. If someone prefers film they might not want to, or be able to, burn through a whole roll and get it developed, scanned, and edited on a weekly basis. It also allows for busyness and lousy weather, and lets anyone participating work on their photos with some care and leisure.

What I was thinking was, instead of an agreed-upon (or dictated) group theme, we have a fixed list of possible themes. To start the challenge anyone participating picks a random number and 'draws' the corresponding theme. They get a month to go and work on it, and all the results are posted - along with the theme chosen - when the month is up. Everyone then indulges in a flurry of crit and/or explanation of their own photos before they roll again for the next month.

Judging - certainly possible, though tougher with the mixed-bag of results coming in - smells like administrative overhead to me. I don't know how much is to actually be gained by it, either.

Simplicius wrote:

DEATH wrote:Fuck yeah. Weekly even?

I think monthly would be better on the whole. If someone prefers film they might not want to, or be able to, burn through a whole roll and get it developed, scanned, and edited on a weekly basis. It also allows for busyness and lousy weather, and lets anyone participating work on their photos with some care and leisure.

What I was thinking was, instead of an agreed-upon (or dictated) group theme, we have a fixed list of possible themes. To start the challenge anyone participating picks a random number and 'draws' the corresponding theme. They get a month to go and work on it, and all the results are posted - along with the theme chosen - when the month is up. Everyone then indulges in a flurry of crit and/or explanation of their own photos before they roll again for the next month.

Judging - certainly possible, though tougher with the mixed-bag of results coming in - smells like administrative overhead to me. I don't know how much is to actually be gained by it, either.

We could just be safe (and lazy) and have the monthly/weekly contest be decided by popular votes. (Although that might be tricky due to the anemic amounts of browsers in this subforum).

Fuck You rules, I'm spending too much time abroad to upload pictures with any sort of regularity, so i'm going to cheat a bit:

Some of my favourite pictures from 4-5 days in Washington DC:

IMG_1572


IMG_1616


IMG_1701


Washington DC A-121


IMG_2131


IMG_2151

The interior of the Washington Cathedral. Awesome light. Handheld shot. (I hate tripods and didn't have one with me in the USA anyway).

Washington DC-137


Washington DC-157

White flower. Simple and calm.

Washington DC-170

frozen (photographically) water. How High can your camera go?

phongn wrote:

Phongn, as I said via PM, I slightly prefer mine .

DEATH, I'd have to disagree with the above. Your shutter speed was too fast which froze the water and broke up the stream of water into distinct clumps of droplets. In phongn's version the fountain consists of nice continuous streams of water which show motion and look a lot more natural.

In addition, he's got better separation of the statue from the background even though it's black & white. In yours, it looks confused, the statue is too similar in colour & brightness to the background, as was the case with some of your pictures in one of the museum threads.

The one thing I'm not quite sure about in the shot is the mime in the background. I intentionally put him in the frame, but I'm still not sure how well it worked out. The two subjects seem to compete with each other.

As for DEATH's version, the water spray off the statue catches my attention more than the statue itself.

DEATH wrote:We could just be safe (and lazy) and have the monthly/weekly contest be decided by popular votes. (Although that might be tricky due to the anemic amounts of browsers in this subforum).

There's no contest suggested, popular or otherwise. The exercise is meant to be a way to hone aesthetic and technical skills by shooting pre-selected subjects which hopefully fall outside one's zone of comfort and experience. What purpose is there in 'winning' when there isn't actually anything at stake (not even a Winner's Gallery, because this is a BBS and not a photo website), and how could there be meaningful judging when all the participants are shooting different themes? It's apples to tractors.

I would love to have the mystery theme idea you suggested, if you'd be willing to put in the time to run it; though I would suggest we at least do this in another thread, perhaps two - one for contributions with all comment prohibited, one for critique with tight moderation to keep things on-topic.

Also, DEATH, if you have that many pictures you want to share, why not spread them out over a few days or start a new thread?

Bounty wrote: Also, DEATH, if you have that many pictures you want to share, why not spread them out over a few days or start a new thread?

What like these?.

I have a lot of pics, and I fly abroad to Japan in a very few days. Time constraints, I have to focus it a bit.

I have a lot of pics, and I fly abroad to Japan in a very few days. Time constraints, I have to focus it a bit.

That's great. Use the other threads you started.

DEATH wrote:I have a lot of pics, and I fly abroad to Japan in a very few days. Time constraints, I have to focus it a bit.

Every single one of those photos was already posted in your Washington, D.C. thread - so you're not even adding anything new as you trample on thread etiquette.

Let's get medieval.

The Knights of Nottingham had a jousting tournament at the Catle of Horst this weekend. It was fun - so much so I barely remember to take a few pictures. these were mostly taken from the stand with a Canon compact, so unfortunately they ended up being mostly wide shots where the subject drowns in the background, or close shot that suffered from motion.

AWESOME! Pity you didn't manage to get closer though.

Wind turbine




The next two are here since I don't have enough pictures to start a separate thread. Swans are big birdies.

Just got back from New York! We stayed in the Courtyard Marriott in Jersey City, and on our last night in town, we came out of Confucius restaurant. A thunderstorm had just ended, and the sky was a really interesting colour.



Rebecca pointed it out, and I had to take a picture. I didn't mess with colour filters or any of that nonsense; that image is completely unaltered (apart from resizing it for the web). The sky really did look that colour.

The building is the office building which was across the street from the Marriott.

@Wong - Awesome, something similiar happened to the sky when I was in Chile (red and black with purple-pink veins, throbbing with big powerful clouds)... That doesn't come out sounding like I meant it to

Mike, I like the color palette of the photo, which is obviously why you took it.

I do have a couple of critiques on it though. I would have like the photo a little better is you went about 30 feet to the left so that Mercury Vapor lamp was framed out and you were more centered on the building.

The other thing is to do some perspective correction once you get the photo into Photoshop so that the building doesn't look like it's leaning away from the viewer. Perspective correction is a simple fix in photoshop and a standard bit of post-processing for any kind of architecture photography. Especially because the only alternative is to use a really expensive tilt-shift lens.

I'm trying to find a good crop for this picture but it's not working.
I'm thinking of removing the trees & building but I'm not sure that would help.

The carp pond at the Garfield Park Conservatory



Some of the chains - the processor screwed up the image though * shake fist *



And - taken with Velvia 50.

Heh, I like them. It looks like the kid has a halo.

Yes he was on board if you where wondering.

Moon Shot taken using my Canon SX10 IS at full 80x zoom.



The picture could have been clearer but there was some haze/pollution in the atmosphere and I was on a small plastic tripod....

Bigger pic here